Guild Wars 2

So I was leveling in Bloodtide Coast, I am currently level 47 and I was fighting level 50 Pirates and Risen. When I can get those enemies to attack my pet, I can get him to hold his own with several of them beating on him at once. Normally at enemies the same level as me, I usually don’t have too much trouble keeping at least a couple of them trying to attack my pet instead of me. But these enemies three levels above me seem to make a beeline towards me no matter what I try to do. Most of the time they don’t even know my pet exists. And I end up getting killed even though with my pets help I would have no trouble with them, because sometimes they do attack my pet as well as me. But mostly just attack me.

Is this just a AI adjustment once enemies are above level 50, or is this just because the enemies are higher level than me? It is very annoying, but this only happens in this circumstance. Enemies the same level as me act just fine. Has anyone else encountered this?

wait till you are at malchor’s leap. They dont even bother with your pet.

It’s just a few types of mobs, mostly Risen but not all Risen-types that do this.

Yes, Risen are notorious for this. Basically, Risen AI is specifically designed to ignore ranger pets, mesmer illusions, etc. In other words, they ignore NPCs and attack players themselves, generally.

I’m not sure what other types of enemies do this, but Risen definitely do.

Might as well learn to hate risen mobs now, it will save time when you hit level 70 lol

I think its good, makes you have to use other pets and utilize their (and your own) abilities to manage. If I could get a mob (or mobs) stick with my bear all the time, there would be little use for any other pets. Now I need to select the pet (and weapons/utilities) different for more intelligent mobs.

However I agree that sometimes there doesn’t seem to be any real “idea” behind which mobs do that and which dont. Sometimes a supposedly intelligent enemy doesn’t ignore the pet, but then a simple animal does.

This https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Busting-the-Myth-of-Useless-Pets is good write-up about what I tried to summarize shortly.

This is actually not a bad thing. You just have to change the pet = tank strategy. If you pet doesn’t get attacked, then you can use those more fragile pets but stronger attacks. You can also still use a tank pet along with the “protect me” skill.

Depend on what type ogf mobs yo are fighting, they will ignore the pet and go straight for ya… if that happens you need to use a different type of pet, fighting method.

I usualy go for ranged pets or ones with snares and either kite, or take it like a sado ranger !

Oh, I did notice risen seemed to do it more. That makes sense if it is just that type of mob that specifically ignores pets.

I didn’t mean my style was keeping every enemy on my pet. I usually switch between them, while still trading blows with them. I just got swarmed by Risen a couple times, it just seemed odd but seeing how they are mindless zombies, that makes sense.

Oh man, Risen mobs are the absolute worst. Take everything you have learned as a ranger from level 1-70 and throw it out the window.

Risen are undead, and prefer your juicy brains to your pet’s brain (they can’t even remember their own names, jeez, why’d they’d want to eat ’em anyway).

So take what you should have learned from 1-70 and kite them, its not that hard.

I think us Rangers should have a bag full of brains, so we can throw them away from us so the Risens can go agro that instead while you run of laughing.

I had to change my strategy pretty heavily as I hit the point the OP is describing. What I noticed was that as my damage, armor and health started to really ramp up compared to my pets, they just wouldn’t hold any aggro anymore.

We’ve been told/established that aggro is a function of 1) How much damage are you doing 2) Where are you located (melee prioritized over range) 3) What’s your armor rating (more armor, more aggro) and 4) What’s your total health pool (more health, more aggro) with the overall precedence in that order.

Well, once you get into the lvl 50 range, you start gearing up with better gear, your trait points start adding up and your damage, armor and health start becoming much larger compared to your pet. Its only natural that the enemy is going to focus on the player more.

Prior to 50, I usually ran dual bears or dual dogs because they could tank well and kept the heat off of me. But when I hit that change over, I realized I couldn’t rely on that anymore. So I swapped to dual birds for fights with little AoE, maximizing my damage because I knew the aggro would stay on me or dual devourers because they could still hit while I was kiting the enemy and their huge toughness values and damage allowed them to sometimes take aggro back from me.

The issue has just gotten worse at 80, especially with full Knight/Soldier Exotics. Before a single attack is launched, the defensive substantial defensive stats make the AI default to me over my pet.

mob aggro as you get higher considers the health and toughness of available targets, in addition to who is the first to attack them and how far away targets are. contrary to the above poster, most mobs target the weakest and furthest player, not the strongest (though there are a few, generally slow heavy hitter melee mobs that target close+high armor targets).

if you are weaker than your pet (tank pet) or your group mates (warriors, players with good amounts of vit/toughness), the mobs will zero in on you every time.

+start wearing some toughness/vit gear
+whenever possible, stand back and send you pet in to get the first strike
+if pet fails to get aggro, swapping pets has a pretty good shot at peeling
+learn to use a melee weapon, some risen move too fast to kite

Raven.9603:

mob aggro as you get higher considers the health and toughness of available targets, in addition to who is the first to attack them. contrary to the above poster, mobs target the weakest, not the strongest.

if you are weaker than your pet (tank pet) or your group mates (warriors, players with good amounts of vit/toughness), the mobs will zero in on you every time.

+start wearing some toughness/vit gear
+whenever possible, stand back and send you pet in to get the first strike
+if pet fails to get aggro, swapping pets has a pretty good shot at peeling
+learn to use a melee weapon, some risen move too fast to kite

can’t argue there, nice one dude.

Wait till you get the risen mobs that pull you…. running through Cursed Shore trying to reach a skill point and being pulled everywhere by Scorpion clones… most annoying thing ever.

Avigrus.2871:

Wait till you get the risen mobs that pull you…. running through Cursed Shore trying to reach a skill point and being pulled everywhere by Scorpion clones… most annoying thing ever.

The worst ever, what was ANET thinking..does get annoying to be honest lol

Raven.9603:

mob aggro as you get higher considers the health and toughness of available targets, in addition to who is the first to attack them and how far away targets are. contrary to the above poster, most mobs target the weakest and furthest player, not the strongest (though there are a few, generally slow heavy hitter melee mobs that target close+high armor targets).

if you are weaker than your pet (tank pet) or your group mates (warriors, players with good amounts of vit/toughness), the mobs will zero in on you every time.

+start wearing some toughness/vit gear
+whenever possible, stand back and send you pet in to get the first strike
+if pet fails to get aggro, swapping pets has a pretty good shot at peeling
+learn to use a melee weapon, some risen move too fast to kite

This is false. I’m sorry, but we have quotes from the devs on this. The toughest built and closest targets take priority. It was the designer’s compromise towards allowing a minor amount of “aggro control tanking” making it so that the bulkiest target draws the most aggro.

I can provide quotes from the developers directly if you want but take the wiki page in the mean time: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

TLDR – The quoted poster is completely wrong, disregard what Raven is suggesting

Omega.1473:

This is false. I’m sorry, but we have quotes from the devs on this. The toughest built and closest targets take priority. It was the designer’s compromise towards allowing a minor amount of “aggro control tanking” making it so that the bulkiest target draws the most aggro.

I can provide quotes from the developers directly if you want but take the wiki page in the mean time: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

TLDR – The quoted poster is completely wrong, disregard what Raven is suggesting

i would love quotes from the developer, because the wiki you just quoted is using 2 anet pre launch publicity videos that dont actually discuss aggro mechanics as its “source.”

lead dev discussing mobs that prefer to attack players farther away, while some prefer to target heavily armored players (this november): http://kotaku.com/5960951/the-lead-designer-of-guild-wars-2-is-answering-your-questions-right-now

the player specifically mentioned risen, and anyone can easily test this (in fact, he is probably making this post having experienced it first hand). put on a high armor set, send a cat at a pack of mobs, start shooting. the cat will get attacked. put on a low armor set, send in a bear, the ranger gets attacked.

anecdotal evidence: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70623-how-does-aggro-work-in-this-game/